and frost. Not the motion gulped in by the eyes, which at the right depth will freeze over, but the motion generated in desire, which outlives starvation. The pure experience of cold is to inhabit it. Trees purify themselves by dropping leaves and draining sap, and enter January bodily. They neither succumb nor disappear, but occupy winter. There is no more ancient activity in the universe than the seeds of heat inside the cold. The mind aligns the emptiness. It frames the snow and ice, and zero temperatures, and spruces which are little more than crater-edges. Black, empty space becomes eternally active. Seven crystals magnified in winter air are sisters, Pleiades. Three others are a hunter's belt. Seven in the north become a massive whirling bear. Europa's ice and Callisto's mountains are gateways into hell. Snow is a natural condition of April. Bark in the Adirondacks becomes food. The simple act of waking on a winter morning when the fire is out requires a mind of winter, seeing nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is. And minutes later, out of empty black space comes sunrise. Copyright Dana Wilde 2007; The North American Review 1996 Previous page Fires of the Sun home The Mind Errant

Winter Moons

Photo courtesy of Anthony Ayiomamitis www.perseus.gr